States’ rights

Arguments about federal policies encouraged Southern claims that states should be able to resist national interference. However, states’ rights were not a separate explanation that made slavery unimportant: they became closely connected to defending it.

Many Southern politicians supported the Southern Manifesto, opposing the school desegregation ruling. They argued that the federal government had no right to interfere in individual states’ education policies. This was a states’ rights argument: they presented their resistance as defending state independence, while its practical purpose was to preserve segregated schools.